Corporeal
by Penrose Quinn
Summary: Kikyo's heart no longer bleeds. However his does. [NarKik. Meiji Restoration AU.]


Meiji Restoration Japan AU. One-sided NarKik. In which Naraku is a prostitute.

 **Warning:** _Mature and dark themes. Prostitution. Sexual implications; semi-explicit_

* * *

I swore not to love you  
but my heart is as changeable  
as cloth of hanezu dye.

 _Ōtomo no Sakanoe no Iratsume_

* * *

i. eyes

Her eyes don't want to tell a story. It is the first thing he notices in his new patron.

Naraku likens her dark long lashes to that of butterfly wings; the manner they flutter about in demure grace and flight and in search of solace in a man's arms. _Strange_ , he thinks, because what comes before him is neither an officer nor a soldier but a beauty who may as well be the bride of one.

His conscience almost teeters at the thought of touching a virgin. However not quite in the way he finds it profane, but captivating— _corrupting_. Those eyes don't appear as pure as he assumes. They are murk; in the red room, half-cut in shadow, it is mocking in its modesty. If touched by light, melancholic. Magnetic—in all her unvoiced mysteries.

Kikyo is her name, but who _is_ Kikyo in those tragic eyes? Those eyes that stare in his soul but do not possess one?

When he unravels her robes, he realizes he doesn't really care that much. Tonight, he is her lover and he worships her.

From the faint glow of the candle, her gaze flashes amber. He claims to have bedded a goddess.

* * *

ii. hair

On woven sheets, her dark hair glistens in blue, his in soot. Her red ribbon lays limp in the corner, like the length of her body flushed beneath him. Unkempt and unclasped by metal hairpins, his wild mane becomes their shroud as it clings at his perspiring brow and curtains at her cheeks. Kikyo gasps out and there is a strand at the side of her lips—is that his? Her hand grasps at his curls from the ends where it sticks damply at the arch of his back.

In their union, their locks tangle, twist, twine until the colors bleed into one, and as if consuming the other, they turn into one deformed entity. Two miserable halves that strive to complete a whole.

* * *

iii. neck

"You never gave me your name," Kikyo says in her wispy voice, shedding her pale kosode from her shoulder. The manner she moves reminds him of a wilting orchid, ever-folding and ever-falling from its grace.

"You never found it necessary before," his hand brushes away the locks that cling onto her arms, fingers lingering from the end of each strand. _These are the roots_ , he contemplates. Dark gnarling roots that feed and feed on him however is incapable of giving anything in return.

"What am I going to call you then," she starts, her voice a deep caress, "to whisper to your ear?"

It stirs something vicious and primal in him. The sudden bout of desire to push her down on her knees and shove his cock to her pretty little mouth overtakes his imagination. However he is patient and he is wiser in this game of seduction than this fallen woman shall ever be. For that, he promises to make her scream for him tonight.

"You may call me any," Naraku tells her, but he knows to himself all too well that he refuses his own name. His name is abhorrent, and such spoken upon her lips feels blasphemous. He embraces her from behind in the manner that she has always been fond of; treating her like an adored woman, his long arms enclosed on the curves of her waist and his hands in a possessive hold. Kikyo wants to be loved—or at least, she wants to believe that she is, in this sensual delusion.

She gasps when she feels him press through the barrier of their clothing. Relishing the way she squirms when she attempts to appear stoic and unresponsive to his caresses, he trails open-mouthed kisses underneath her ear. "I'm yours, anyway."

" _Inuyasha,_ " she whispers, and then he jealously brands his name in purple against her neck.

* * *

iv. face

Naraku is a creature of dismembered parts and moralities; not quite a man, not quite a woman—not less than both, whenever he dons on his long billowing robes of ebizome dye and paints his face in rice powder and rogue, reveling in the masquerade that he is a person. Before the mirror, he compares his likeness to that of an ayakashi of Noh, a malicious spirit of a thousand lives and lies.

When the moon ascends high, he is a man, he is a woman, and he is a beast, in the skin of your lover, of your whore, of your ghost, and of your demon. The object of your desire and the ache in between your legs, when he pushes back his clothes and his tongue tastes the sin of another. He is many things all at once, but he is hollow, too. The hollowness gapes on his soul and he thinks he might sink low enough to fall down to his knees and drag his victim alongside him.

That is why most of his patrons are hideous and scarred, the wretched ilk that is intimate with gunpowder, grime, and gore, because there is a certain cruelty in his beauty, a splendor in his darkness that many a man and woman will flee away in fear of being swallowed whole.

Albeit her purity, Kikyo possesses this similar darkness and embraces him with wide open arms for it.

* * *

v. lips

There are times that Kikyo weaves the most absurd tales. One of them being that he is a naval officer under the Shogunate Navy retreating to Hokkaidō and that she is his lady lover that awaits for his return beneath the Goshinboku. It is their promise, she says. To be together, after the war. She tells him that he escapes anyway; before the fleets abscond to the north and that he sacrifices his family honor for love and his loyalty for their future.

Naraku _laughs_.

"Are you delusional?" he rasps out in between heavy breaths, thrusting inside of her. "Tell me you are, you foolish woman!"

Her voice is lost to the wet sinful rhythm of their bodies. She is writhing in her dreams, stripped of the white trappings of a bride-to-be, as she spreads her legs to him like a cheap harlot. He takes her there when he smothers her mouth and licks off the taste of the phantom on her tongue.

However what leaves her lips are broken remnants: "you love me, tell me. . . you love _me_ , only me," she sighs hotly to his neck, a soft murmur of desperation, "for you are mine."

Naraku kisses her again. He only does so because he lives in this delusion too.

* * *

vi. teeth

Naraku hopes to cut out her heart and see the blood flow within her veins because he begins to ponder if she even does have one, while she manages to peel his skin from bone, lap at the torn muscle beneath—a beat starts and then another, from that old wretched thing that should have been ripped off his chest years ago. She marvels at the sight of him as she straddles him above; just when her teeth glint and graze the flesh of his breast, demanding its bloody sacrifice.

Kikyo bites him and his fingers tug back a handful of her flowing hair. He hates her for being cruel enough to place a gash on his heart however he cannot help but love her all the more when she could be this cruel as well. She sensually licks at his wound in a poor thinly-veiled excuse for an apology, eyes in its tantalizing trance upon him. He doesn't forgive her.

He laughs at her attempt in seducing him.

He laughs at himself for letting her live that luxury.

* * *

vii. skin

In those nights, the burning of their flesh never ceases. Fucking, groping, biting—they're like beasts in a rut.

Distractedly, Naraku thinks he'd rather die like this.

* * *

viii. hands

Within the thralls of a brothel, there is nothing truly gratifying in the life of a kagema.

Perhaps, there is humiliation though he has long since dealt with its searing throes at the time of his childhood and that he doesn't have the luxury to rail all of his misfortunes to a world unwilling to listen. However there is consolation in the shadow of a room, where a spider hides from the hustle and bustle of Yoshiwara and the Hinomaru flags that flail violently in the wind; the red sun that watches the country spill for blood.

Naraku doesn't mind the ruin and the corruption that thrives in the streets of the red-light district. The thieves, the petty crimes, and even the blood money. There are all sorts of filth out there, whether it be disease or defilement. There may be some sentimental value that can be taken in the latter; he was sold young and sex is a lucrative business, after all.

Licking his lips, he smokes from his kiseru pipe from the window pane and the moonlight washes him silver in his nudity. The scent of burnt tobacco is sharp and melancholic, coalesced over the musky notes of strong incense, flesh, and sweat. He could still see the ghosts from the embers. From the corner of his eye, he sets his sights on the slumbering female form on the bed and the purple bites and bruises that mottle her perfect skin. He still has her scratches, red and raw behind his back, as if she intends to lay claim on him in that glorious moment.

The bleak colors of reality leave him from her beckon. The ghosts can wait. In bare feet and a scar on his chest, he comes to her. When she reaches for him with her elegant hands, he lets her hold him down, lets the madness devour him alive.

* * *

ix. chest

As Naraku kisses the valley between her breasts, he muses how women's hearts are strange things. They sing when they swell with love and bleed when cut with grief.

Kikyo's heart no longer bleeds. However his does.

* * *

x. ear

They share another night and it feels like a glimpse in an eternity. However there is no promise in their affections or permanence in their coupling.

Naraku knows this, but he is a fool. He coos sweet nothings to her ear, but his throat stops and his words fail him. There is a sigh and there is a whimper upon her lips—and there is a need, unvoiced by his own.

* * *

xi. thighs

Sometimes, he despises her to her very rotten core however he couldn't help but adore her in all the wrong ways.

As they lay on the bed in a tangle of limbs, she slips her tongue in his lips and licks the venomous cavern of his soul. Naraku mulls over what she can still possibly taste from his mouth because all that he knows of it is its poison and her saliva. He then decides to push her down to her back and pepper kisses to her jaw, breasts and down to her stomach, until he can hoist her legs onto his broad shoulders and lap the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. Her slender body arches and she submits to the caresses of his tongue.

 _I love you._ Naraku goes on deeper and deeper, searching for solace in the midst of their passion. He finds the horizon, the peak of bliss, as he traces his hidden sentiments into distant echoes—will it reach her, finally? She comes. _Will you love me?_

* * *

xii. heart

Beneath the skin of her chest, there has long since bore no heart because it belongs to another. However his own remains intact, and it sings poignantly for her still because each beat is hers to have but never quite enough to reach her ears.

* * *

 **Exposition Corner:**

 **Kagema:** they were young male prostitutes, often closely associated with the kabuki theater during the Edo period.

 **Yoshiwara:** it was the chief licensed pleasure district in Tokyo (Edo), and the largest or most prominent district in Japan.

 **Ayakashi:** Noh mask for roles involving dead or ghost characters in Noh theater.

" **retreated to Hokkaidō. . ." and "before the fleets abscond to the north".:** a reference to the Boshin War in Meiji Restoration Japan, specifically taking place during the Battle of Hakodate in Hokkaidō. In this AU, Inuyasha happens to be a naval officer and a Tokugawa loyalist.

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 **Disclaimer:** I do not own Inuyasha.


End file.
